


heartbreak town

by Moonlark



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, F/F, a general sense of melancholy, but like a good sad, this is kinda sad y’all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24529534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonlark/pseuds/Moonlark
Summary: “This is an intricate dance they do, close to truth and yet just shy enough to make the small life in Port Nacket bearable. They know each other’s devotion, but to speak it would shatter the peace.”
Relationships: Lindsey Horan/Emily Sonnett
Kudos: 41





	heartbreak town

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Dixie Chicks’ “Heartbreak Town”.

It’s nearly sundown by the time Emily finally gets away from the clinic. Her car still isn’t working (she had to borrow Mr. Johnson’s for today’s calls) but it wouldn’t really make sense to use it even if it was—the restaurant is only a brisk fifteen minute walk away, and the cobblestone streets are narrow and hard to navigate even in broad daylight. So instead she runs, bag flapping open at her hip, an irrational fear growing in her chest that she’s late, and maybe Lindsey will have left without her—

But when she reaches the top of the hill and turns onto High St., there’s still a familiar silhouette sitting on the stone wall at the street’s end, staring down at the bay below. Emily sighs in relief and jogs the last hundred meters, perking up as Lindsey turns around toward her. It’s been a long, hard day, but Emily doesn’t care about that anymore.

Lindsey wrinkles her nose when Emily gets close. “You stink,” she complains, but she still pats the stone beside her in a clear motion to sit.

Emily sits and tugs off her filthy shirt, tossing it aside and shrugging her long coat back on; she still hasn’t gotten around to replacing the buttons, so it just hangs open over her sports bra, letting the cold air hit her chest. That gets rid of the worst of the smell, but she knows the faint trace stenches of manure and sweat and rubbing alcohol are going to linger for a while. “Sorry,” she says apologetically, “lambing season.”

“Not in _those_ clothes,” Lindsey says, putting on her best ‘scandalized’ face.

“No! I just... forgot a change of shirt, that’s all.”

“Eh, it’s a nice view, I don’t mind.” Lindsey makes a point of looking, grinning as Emily blushes, and then hands her a thermos of hot soup.

Emily suddenly remembers that all she’s eaten today was a quick lunch with the Guillards after delivering a significantly oversized lamb. (They’d insisted on it, and—well, no vet in their right mind would ever turn down free food.) Her stomach growls, loudly.

Lindsey laughs at that, but doesn’t say anything else as she hands over a spoon. She leans against Emily’s side, quiet as Emily eats, a few strands of blonde hair that slipped free of her ponytail dancing in the wind.

The soup is good, a rich fish chowder left over from the restaurant. There’s no way of knowing exactly who made it (and she’s certainly not gonna ask Lindsey), but she likes to think she can taste her girlfriend’s love in it, just for her.

She slurps the last of it down, then sets the thermos aside, reaching up with her other hand to rub at Lindsey’s shoulders, trying to ease the lines of tension in her back. “Got anything for yourself?” she asks. On good days, Lindsey will eat with her, bringing all sorts of seafood from the restaurant—battered cod, salmon salads, crab cakes—whatever the day’s leftovers are. On the bad days...

Lindsey shakes her head. “Ate already.”

Emily nods, even as her heart clenches a little. There’s pain in those words, hidden so deep to be almost invisible, and she’d miss it if she didn’t know what to look for. “Anything interesting today?”

Lindsey sighs, looks away. “The day something interesting happens there is gonna be the day I finally snap and start flipping tables.” She sounds frustrated, a stove on a low simmer, but that’s to be expected when it comes to talk of the restaurant. There’s no way to escape there, not when she once said it feels like her father’s ghost is breathing down her neck and staring through every window, and not when letting her temper go could tank the whole business.

Emily just hums, shrugging a little. Lindsey doesn’t want her pity, and she doesn’t blame her, so she focuses on comfort instead, on the simple work of her hands on Lindsey’s shoulders. 

Lindsey sighs again and sags into it, ducking her head but keeping her eyes locked on the horizon. “What about you—lambing season, huh?”

Emily winces and then shivers in the early spring wind. “Yeah. Not pleasant today—had to put down another ewe at the Hanssen’s because those idiots can’t recognize a breech birth when it’s right in front of them. Every fucking year—if they’d just called sooner...” She trails off, shakes her head. “After that it was the Guillards, and they know what they’re doing at least, but they’re trying a new breed that have one hell of a fight in them.” She gestures at the hoofprint-shaped bruise right in the middle of her chest. “The first time mothers there made some pretty big lambs for their size, too. Couldn’t get them all out on their own.”

Lindsey leans forward, twisting around to put a finger against the bruise—light enough that it doesn’t hurt, but present enough that Emily still feels it. She meets Emily’s gaze and holds there, staring, charged, something deep and uncomfortable lurking in her eyes. “I’d kiss it better,” she says, a strange, raw edge to her voice, “if you wanted.”

The silence stretches out, long as the shadows on the water below, and Emily flounders for something to say. She can’t fully think like this, not with the setting sun half behind Lindsey’s head, wreathing her in pink and orange—not with Lindsey’s fingers hovering against her sternum, hesitant and feather-light. _Yes_ , she thinks, _always, of course, I want you_. But the words get stuck in her throat, trapped against her own tongue and her terrible, damning hesitancy. This is an intricate dance they do, close to truth and yet just shy enough to make the small life in Port Nacket bearable. They know each other’s devotion, but to speak it would shatter the peace.

“Even though I’m stinky?” she says instead, reaching up to capture Lindsey’s searching fingers in her own.

Lindsey laughs and nods, a little smile sliding over her face, and then turns back toward the sea, but the moment doesn’t break. The breeze picks up, sending another shiver through Emily, making her aware of the warmth of the woman next to her, the heat of their thighs touching, the comfort of their palms pressed together. On other days, this would stir desire. Today, she is tired, bone-deep in a way the wind presses on, and Lindsey is... unmoored, so they simply sit, side by side.

“Do you ever think about it?” Lindsey asks, a few minutes later, her fingers tightening around Emily’s for a split second before she lets go. “Taking a boat out someday and just... going somewhere? Not coming back?”

“Sometimes,” Emily responds, humming a little under her breath, sneaking a sideways glance at the way the low light makes Lindsey’s face glow. _I would_ , she doesn’t say. _For you_.

She can’t say it, even here, but it’s true.

Lindsey’s like the sun, warming every room she enters, burning anyone who gets too near. She’s far too bright for this town, chafing against the smallness of everything like a captured mustang, or an overcurious foal—Emily isn’t sure which. But she does know that whatever Lindsey is, she would follow her anywhere, even to the ends of the earth.

She knows that if it was just her, then maybe she could be happy here. She could get up before dawn and go out to help whatever farmer catastrophe had struck that night, and come home to a tiny cottage and the salt of Port Nacket’s ocean breeze, and feel... fulfilled. She could be comfortable here, even when she’s out in the rain and mud dodging cattle hooves or getting pestered by Mrs. Atkinson at the pharmacy over when she’s gonna settle down with a nice boy and make herself respectable. She could live her whole life in this small town and not miss anything at all. She could, she could—

If she had never met Lindsey.

But that went out the window years and years ago.

(She remembers—an old tattered ball, the yard out behind the schoolhouse, the new kid who’d been so shy otherwise coming to life with the ball at her feet. She’d talked to Lindsey afterwards, said something about how good she was, how she could go pro someday if she wanted—and Lindsey had laughed it off, saying—no one will notice _me_.)

It makes Emily a little mad, a little bitter, to think about.

_Somewhere, there’s a world out there that saw your talent_ , she thinks. _Somewhere out there, you’re doing something big, like, like playing for the whole country, and everyone’s so proud, and..._

She says as much, and Lindsey surprises her by laughing. “And in that world, you’re right there beside me!” She reaches down and intertwines her fingers with Emily’s, and says, softly, “I refuse to believe that there is a world that did not put us together.”

And now Emily is actually choking up, so she tugs Lindsey closer and wraps her arms around her and stares out over the rapidly darkening sea, pretending there aren’t tears in her eyes.

Lindsey reaches up and wipes one away. So much for pretending.

The ocean has gone dark, the last hints of light sliding into the waters. The crescent moon cuts through the clouds above them like a wraith. Behind them, a streetlight flickers on.

“I should get home,” Emily sighs, squeezing Lindsey’s hand and standing up. She stuffs the thermos and her discarded shirt in her bag with her free hand, then turns back to Lindsey. “Come with me?”

She makes this offer every night. Most of the time Lindsey refuses—her mom needs the help, after all—but sometimes she gives in, on the nights she really needs it. 

Lindsey looks at their hands, clasped together between them, and then up. The raw look is back in her eyes, unreadable in the dimness, and her mouth opens for a second with no sound.

Emily waits. She has been waiting, and she can wait longer. 

Forever, if necessary.

Lindsey shuts her mouth with a click and swings her legs back over the low stone wall, turning her back on the sea and standing without letting go.

“Okay.”


End file.
